2012/11/24 by Jeong-Man Park, Park, Jeong-Man, Liang Ren Niestemski +3 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Social Sciences · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1211.5646
21 pages, 4 figures; presentation reordered; to appear in Phys. Rev. E
arxiv created 2015/01/05 · arxiv updated 2015/01/07
Biological systems are modular, and this modularity evolves over time and in different environments. A number of observations have been made of increased modularity in biological systems under increased environmental pressure. We here develop a quasispecies theory for the dynamics of modularity in populations of these systems. We show how the steady-state fitness in a randomly changing environment can be computed. We derive a fluctuation dissipation relation for the rate of change of modularity and use it to derive a relationship between rate of environmental changes and rate of growth of modularity. We also find a principle of least action for the evolved modularity at steady state. Finally, we compare our predictions to simulations of protein evolution and find them to be consistent.